Customer Experience Management Strategy Report: McDonald's Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of McDonald's customer experience management (CEM) strategy. It begins with an overview of McDonald's, highlighting its global presence and commitment to customer satisfaction. The report then defines CEM and its importance, emphasizing its role in enhancing customer loyalty, satisfaction, and advocacy. It explores the benefits McDonald's has gained from addressing customer feedback, including reduced costs and increased revenue. The report delves into emerging concepts and practices, such as personalization, mobile payments, and transparency, and how these trends influence customer experience. It examines customer perception, customer journey maps, and various strategies employed by McDonald's to monitor and evaluate customer experience, including seeking feedback, team development, and measuring return on investment. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the significance of CEM in fostering customer loyalty and driving business success in the fast-food industry.

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Customer Experience Management Strategy report
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Customer Experience Management Strategy report at McDonald's
About McDonalds
McDonalds is a fast food company with its headquarters in Chicago America. The
company was founded in 1940 by Richard and Maurice McDonald. The company Starting as
a small restaurant and has since grown to become a multinational company with businesses
all over the world. McDonalds have gained reputation as the world largest restaurant by
revenue and the world second private employer. The company which has more than 36,900
outlets in more than 100 countries has a record of serving more than 68 million customers
every day. The company is known for its hamburgers, chicken products, French fries,
breakfast items, cheeseburgers, wraps and soft drinks.
The company has always been keen to ensure that their customers have the best
experience. They always inquired the customer for a feedback to access their level of
satisfaction and help in improving their products and services. For this reason, the company
reacted to their customer’s negatives backlash and changing tastes because of unhealthy
foods and introduced fruits, smoothies, salads and fish in their menu. This paper tries to look
at customer experience management strategy at McDonalds.
Customer experience management strategy
Customer experience management (CEM) can be defined as a strategy used to
organise, track and oversee all the transactions between the organization and a customer
(Prevos, 2018, p. 12).Customer experience management is important consideration of any
business organisation as it helps in ‘closing the gap’ between the actual customer and the
intended customer. According to Willbun and Morris (2008), CEM helps to increase
customer’s loyalty, satisfaction and advocacy. Customer experience management involves
viewing and improving the interactions between a customer and the organization from the

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customer point of view rather than from the “organizations”, groups and departments point of
view.
According to Waden (2017), Customer experience management has become part of
any business that wants to remain competitive. Businesses only succeed if and only if they
have satisfied customers who are pleased with the services offered. The only way to assess
the level of satisfaction on the customers is to have a successful customer experience
management system (Seligman, 2012, p. 42).
According to management at McDonalds, some of Benefits that the company has
accrued from addressing and acting upon their customers experience are:
 Inquiring about Customer experience helps in lowering costs by reducing customers
churn
 Helps in improving customers loyalty and create products advocated through
memorable and valued customer interaction
 Helps in increasing the organizations revenue with increased sales from existing royal
customers
 Strengthens product and brand preferences through differentiated customer
experiences
Emerging concepts and practises that underpin the customer experience at McDonalds
According to t research by kureemum, et al., (2011), customer experience has proved
to be an important aspect of business success. A study by Arussy (2005) showed that
businesses lose more that 25% of their customers due to poor customer experience. Some of
emerging trends that have affected customer experience at McDonalds are:
Personalization

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The main goal of any business is to have a big number of satisfied customers.
Different customers on the hand have different tastes and experiences. To help in meeting the
expectations of all customers, McDonalds have been providing tailored services to their
customers. Understanding the expectations of a customer enables the restaurant to serve their
customer best reinforcing connection. This has an effect of making the customer to always
come back thus increasing the revenue of the company (Nasır, 2015, p. 24).
Mobile payments
Mobile payments are convenient in that it provides personalized content and it is safe
(Bruhn, 2015, p. 142). This provides a platform where customers are able to get their services
from the comfort of their home as they pay via their phones. Mobile payments have effects
on customers experience in that luck of physical contact helps in reducing personal conflict
between the restaurant employees and their customers. Mobile payments at McDonalds have
led to introduction of delivery services. This service has enabled customers to make orders at
the comfort of their homes. A successful transaction between the restaurant and a customer
that was done via mobile money tends to boost customer experience.
Next level transparency and inclusiveness
Being transparent about services and products provided by the business organization
tends to boost customers experience (Shaw & Ivens, 2007). Customers feel to have a better
experience with a business when the business is open on how they run their business. For
example, McDonalds have a policy whereby they provide demonstration to their customers
on their production process and openly sharing their pricing to the customers. This has an
effect of making the customer have trust on the restaurant and record good experience.
Despite the fact that this inclusiveness has proved to be costly and risky, the company has
gained a number of royal customers who feel being part of the company thus translating to
increased revenues and growth.

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Sharing economy
Customers have shown appreciation and recorded good experience with business
organizations which provide quality but affordable goods and services (Schmitt, 2008, p. 82).
This has made business organizations which used to make low-usage high-cost commodities
such as cars, sports equipment’s and luxury formalwear to develop new models which are
affordable and yet luxurious. McDonalds is one of the biggest and prestigious food stores in
the world. Despite the status, the company has always set its bar low providing quality
services to people at all social classes. For this reason, customers who seek the company
services have always shown appreciation and gave a positive when asked about their
experience
Application of customer perception to the customer experience of service delivery at
McDonalds
Customer perception can be expressed as the manner in which customers think about
a business and goods and services provided (Newell, 2010, p. 76). Customer perception
affects the ability of an organization to keep existing customers and to attract new customers.
Customers experience in an organization is not only affected by the quality and value of
goods and services they are getting but also their perception on the organization, products and
service that are offered by the organization.
Some of the factors that influence customer’s perception on a business are:
advertising, personal experience and influencers (Shaw & Ivens, 2007).
A business inability to create a positive business perception leads to negative
perception. Some of the ways in which a business can create and maintain a positive
perception are: by use of local channels to make adverts, making promises that they can meet,
listening to their customers and constantly measuring their customer’s level of satisfaction.
Customers with positive perception about a company tend to have good customer experience.

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On the other hand, a customer with a negative perception do not appreciate the services
offered and will always record a bad experience with the business organization.
At McDonalds, the management has keen to deal with any information that could
create negative perception to their existing and new customers. The company ensure that all
customer complaints are dealt with positive feedback and reviews are posted in their various
social medial sites to help in creating trust among their customers. Other methods used by the
company to create customer perception among their clients include making adverts in radios,
dailies and television stations and funding various social activities
Customer journey map
Customer journey map is a representation of typical customer experience. The journey
tends to focus more on questions and task. Customer experience maps are a representation of
customer experience over a certain period of time (Staudt, 2014, p. 201). Customer journey
map is essential to a business in that it helps the management to understand their services
from the customer’s point of view. This enables the business to identify and implement
opportunities that improves the experience.
Customer experience strategy
Customer experience can be defined as the interactions between an organization and a
customer (Peppers & Rogers, 2017). Customers who have positive experience with a business
tend to become royals. Customer experience strategy can be defined as mechanisms put
forward by a business organization to ensure that their customers have a good experience and
remain royals to the organization’s goods and services.
Tools used to monitor and evaluate customer experience strategy at McDonalds
Some of ways in which McDonalds use to create great experiences with their
customers are:
Having a clear customer experience plans

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The first step of developing a good customer strategy is to have a blueprint of the
experience. The management of the restaurant have developed and communicated to their
employees a clear vision about their customer experience plans. This enable all employees to
work towards delivering the best experience to the their customers
Understanding McDonald’s customers
The management at McDonalds takes their time to understand their different
customers when opening an outlet. Understanding customers need and wants enables the
restaurant to meet their customer’s expectations thus recording a positive experience.
Having an emotional customer connection
In developing and monitoring a business customer experience strategy, a business
should be driven by the phrase, “it’s not what you say, and it’s how you say it”. According to
Shaw, et al., (2011), best customers experiences are developed when business employees
learn to create emotional connection with their clients.
A research by Klaus and Connect (2015) stated that 65% of customer’s experiences
are based on emotional relation between the customer and the business personnel. Customers
tend to become to the business services and its products because they are emotionally
attached to the business. Schmitt (2013) argued that business which invests in emotional
connection with their customers tends to perform 85% better than their competitors.
The statistic available in McDonalds indicates that, their employee’s technique of
emotionally connecting with their Customers has helped in creating great experience to their
customers such that:
 75% of McDonald’s customers are likely to recommend the restaurant
to others
 70% likely to make a comeback
 80% are Less price sensitive

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With the statistics, the restaurants encourages their employees to keep an emotional
connection with the clients so as to offer them the best experience
Always seeking for customer’s feedback
The best way to gauge customer experience with the business is by asking for their
feedback. This can be made possible by asking for their feedback in real time, making calls or
conducting a post-interaction survey vie emails. Seeking customer’s feedback enables a
McDonalds to have an understanding of customer’s positive and negative feelings and thus
help in improving on their services and products
Team development
McDonalds ensure that they conduct a training to their employees to enable them
understand the business agenda in dealing with their customers and meeting their
expectations. Business employees play a vital role in portraying the business image to the
customers and thus creating the customer’s experience. Training employees on good
customer relation policies have helped their employees to create an emotional relation with
the customers leading to royalty.
Acting upon employee’s feedback
To boost customer’s experience on a business, McDonalds is always ready to receive
any feedback from their customers and act on it. Whether positive or negative, if acted upon,
the customer tends to have emotional connection with the business and become royals.
Measure the return on investment derived from great customer experience
The way to measure the performance of a business is by accessing the business
returns. Many businesses have experienced challenges measuring their customers experience
in the past. At McDonalds, the management have developed a policy where they measure
their customers experience and the effectiveness of their customer experience strategy by
evaluating their return gained from customers who keep coming back.

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The business believes that the most important customers are those who come back as
they have a chance of making the restaurant their favourite from the experience gained.
Therefore, an increase in incomes from royal customers means better experience while a
reduction means poor services and thus experience.
Conclusion
Customer expectations on goods and services provided by a business have become
higher than ever. With customer empowerment, it is important for business organizations to
consider their customer’s experiences which determine the future interactions with the
business. Positive customers experiences helps in creating a pool of royal customers who in
turn boost the organizations revenue. At McDonalds, the company has been keen in ensuring
that their customers experience the best services in food industry. They have therefore
developed the best customers experience management strategy have seen the company grow
to the biggest in the world serving more than 68 million customer every day.
References

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